The White Wolf of Hinomoto
by SpontaneousFangirl
Summary: Whispers that haunt the railroads tell of a white-haired Kabane killer who comes to aid sieged Hayajiro passing through the Hinomoto countrysides. Some say she's a Kabane herself, while others claim she's a valiant warrior who fears no enemy. But, theories and rumours aside, there's only one correct story: her own.
1. Hayajiro, dread the scorn

_Author's Note: A few- but long-chaptered story here on an amazing anime I watched (late to the party, but stylishly so?) earlier this year. Canon obsessions aside, here's a nice little OC take on the world. Hope you like it :)_

* * *

"Onii-chan! Wait for me!" Hishima Tomio called, a grin on his face as he sprinted after his sister. Six years difference prevented the ten-year-old from catching her, but he wasn't about to give up trying, even if his sister held the informal record as the fastest runner among the town's children. Where the adults didn't bother to pay attention to the children's silly games, Tomio took the title very seriously, swearing that he would one day claim it for himself.

"C'mon, Tomio-chan! Stop being such a slowpoke!" Hishima Miyako shouted back at her brother playfully, long brown hair swishing through the air behind her as she ran. She might love and spoil her brother, but if he wanted to beat her in running, he'd have to beat her fair and square—no doting loopholes whatsoever.

A grin on her face, she kept her pace—fast enough to stay a step ahead of her brother, but slow enough so that he wouldn't get discouraged—as the two ran towards home.

"Okaa-san, Otou-san!" Miyako called, barely managing to clear the short, precarious climb up the porch steps but not bothering to slow her pace until her feet landed on bamboo rather than wood. "We're back!"

Her voice echoed through the house, bouncing off paper windows and tatami-padded floors. Silence greeted her, prompting a frown from the girl as she padded through the room.

 _Where's Okaa-san and Otou-san?_ she wondered, footsteps muted by the woven reeds under her feet. She leaned over to peek through the doorway into the next room. _When we left, they were right—_

Miyako froze, heart stopping.

"Okaa-san, Otou-san, I'm—"

"Get back, Tomio!" Miyako screamed, her feet rolling into motion just as a red-eyed figure crashed into the thin wall beside her, tearing paper and splintering wood.

With a sharp yell, Tomio fell back, eyes wide with fear as he took in the intruder. Veins of molten metal crawled over the monster's body like vines would a tree. Its coal-like eyes glowed in the dark, flashing red as they flicked and caught on the two humans cowering at the other side of the room.

The sight imprinted itself into Tomio's heart, digging its own fearful niche in his mind. The beast looked inhuman, but it stood on two legs—a crazed, bipedal being that had donned a skin too small, too fragile to contain its monstrous spirit. On its chest, right where its heart should have been, was a glow swirled with blackness—a star in the midst of corruption.

"Tomio!" Miyako yelled, feet pounding on the tatami mat as she charged over, grabbing her brother's arm and dragging him out of his stupor. Fear flowed cold through her veins as she ran out door, her brother in tow.

"Otou-san! Okaa-san!" she yelled, hoping that either of her parents would respond despite the monster's presence in their home.

 _There's still a chance that one of them—that_ both _of them are still alive,_ she thought, breaths quick and shallow as she sprinted into the courtyard. Beside her, Tomio had been reduced to a nervous wreck, tremors clacking his knees together as he clung onto his sister's arm.

"Tomio, I need you with me. Stay sharp," Miyako ordered, spinning around and clasping her brother's shoulder with her other hand. Tomio's eyes focused on his sister's, and he blinked before nodding frantically.

A smile graced Miyako's face when she saw how hard her brother was trying to "man up," straightening his spine and pulling back his shoulders so that his ten-year-old chest puffed up to form a hollow chasm of mock confidence. The smile, however, disappeared as wet thuds approached the doorway the siblings had just exited from. The red-eyed creature paused at the top of the stairs, moonlight illuminating its body.

 _Blood!_ Miyako realized with a jolt, eyes widening as she took in the crimson liquid splattered over the veined creature. Its feet, in particular, were covered in it, shod in murky red that gleamed under the night light.

"Tomio, we need to—"

A bellow sounded from the other side of the courtyard. Miyako snapped around just quick enough to glimpse two more black-eyed, gold-pupiled beasts careening towards her, saliva sloshing out of their mouths. Thrusting her brother to her left, Miyako attempted to kick the first black-pupiled beast that came her way. Her foot connecting with the creature's side, sending the creature back a step, but the other creature saw its chance, grabbing on and sinking its teeth into Miyako's shoulder.

"Onii-chan!" Tomio shouted, tears bursting forth from his eyes as Miyako screamed in pain, doubling over in the humanoid beast's grasp.

The creature she'd kicked recovered itself, grabbing at her. Its fingers hooked onto Miyako's necklace, pulling it so that it dug into her neck, knotting in place tightly. Preparing to bite the girl, the creature instead it found itself knocked away from its prey with a heavy blow that left it more confused than winded.

"Miyako! Take Tomio and run!" Hishima Tamotsu shouted at his daughter, panting as he knocked the other beast off Miyako with a bamboo sword—a shinai.

"Otou-san!" Miyako cried, relief saturating her voice as she threw herself towards her father.

"Miyako, now!" Tamotsu roared, snapping the girl out of her relief-stricken daze. "Take Tomio and run!"

"But Otou-san—"

"NOW!" Tamotsu roared, spittle flying.

Miyako took a step back, alarmed.

"Now, Miyako! Run!"

Turning, Miyako choked back a sob as she scooped up her brother's arm again and ran from the courtyard, not looking back.

"Otou-san!" Tomio cried, struggling against his sister's grip as they sprinted away from their home. He found himself dragged away against his will, forced to keep moving unless he wanted to be pulled off balance and onto the ground. "Miyako, no! We can't leave Otou-san behind!"

Miyako let her brother's cries whip away with the wind as she kept up her sprint, hot tears soaring off with them. She kept running, because that was her job: to keep running.

"Keep Tomio safe!" Hishima's voice called through a chorus of snarls. "Protect your brother, Miyako! I love you!"

Splinters dug into the soles of her feet, the stinging pain turning icey as blood evaporated. Her pace wasn't adjusted to the her brother's this time, but it didn't matter; all that mattered was that they got away—away from the sickening crunches that were sure to follow.

— — —

Kabane. That was the name of the frothy-spittled beasts whose molten lava eyes had bored holes into Miyako's soul. No one knew what they were or how they came to be, but one thing was for certain: they hungered for human blood like monsters of lore, and Miyako loathed and feared them in equal measure. They'd ripped her family apart, claiming both of her parents with one fell swoop. Though she'd known it was a vain, feeble, _pathetic_ dream that her father—despite the bite-marks he'd arrived to save her with, despite his tattered, blood-soaked clothes—had survived, and though she'd known it was utterly stupid to even consider whether her mother had somehow made it out of the house alive when the puddles of blood Miyako tried her best to blot from her memory clearly declared otherwise, she'd _hoped._

Of course, though, her hopes had gone unanswered. What was left of the town had taken residence in a train station reconfigured into a boarded-up stronghold, but it wasn't until hours after the guards had sealed up the station entrance that she was forced to admit to herself that her parents were not coming to meet her. All she had left of them was her necklace, now so tightly knotted around her neck that it hurt to turn her head, the thin metal chain digging into her skin whenever she tried. The chain had knotted just above the pendant, but she could breathe, so removing it wasn't required—not that she'd want to. The picture in the ovular frame inside was her last and only proof of the happy family she'd once been a part of.

"Tomio, are you hungry?" Miyako prompted, giving the boy she was hugging a gentle squeeze when she spotted guards passing out rations nearby.

A headshake answered her, not breaking the oppressive silence.

"Tomio, you have to eat," the girl chided, patting the boy's shoulder and moving to rise. "Stay here. I'll go get us some—"

"Don't leave me!" Tomio cried, tears collecting at the edge of his eyes as he snatched at his sister's sleeve. "Don't leave me."

Miyako's heart broke, shattering at her feet in a pristine pile of despair, but she scooped the pieces up and pasted on a smile.

"Don't you worry, Tomio-chan. Here—come with me," she said, pulling the boy to his feet. "I think they're passing out the bakery bread—don't you like the cream-filled ones the best?"

Silence greeted her question, but Miyako ignored it, choosing to plow through.

"You like the ones that aren't very sweet, right? Like the ones that Okaa-san makes when Otou-san—"

"Stop it!" Tomio shouted, snapping his arm out of his sister's grasp and turning on her with wild eyes. "Stop talking about our parents like they're still alive!"

Miyako paused, arm frozen at her side. A heartbeat passed, then two.

"Tomio," she breathed, voice rimmed with shakiness. "Please—"

"Don't!" Tomio shouted, his voice quieting the hall. "Don't!"

"Is everything alright?" an armored guard asked, walking over and looking between the two siblings. Miyako took a deep breath, recovering herself enough to flash the guard a flimsy smile.

"Yes. May we get some food?" she asked, eyes sliding to the basket of paper-wrapped bread the guard was holding.

"Of course. Please try to be quiet from now on—there are people trying to get some rest," he told Miyako as he handed her two small loaves.

"We will," Miyako promised, bowing respectfully. "Thank you."

The guard nodded, moving away to continue his rounds.

Looking over at her brother, Miyako hesitated before gently replacing her hand around his shoulder.

"Why don't we sit back down, Tomio?" Miyako asked, patting the boy's back.

Silent once again, Tomio sank down, wrapping his arms around his knees and burying his face in them. Miyako sat down next to him, silently pocketing the loaves of bread, her stomach churning at the sickeningly sweet smell wafting out from the paper.

— — —

A shriek broke the quiet rustling of the crowd, sharp with terror as it echoed off the station walls. More shrieks followed, and Miyako turned to spot a crowd of people tripping over one another in haste as they backed away from some unseen terror. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the object—creature—that had incited the people's' fear, its eyes of flaming coals flashing as it reached an arm out, snatching at the nearest person.

Shooting to her feet, Miyako dragged Tomio into a sprint for the side of the station that was furthest from the Kabane. Screams chased their footsteps, fear drowning out all other noises.

 _I have to keep Tomio safe,_ Miyako thought, panting as she ran. _I have to keep Tomio away from the Kabane._

Her head burned with the onset of what seemed like a fever, but the bucket of icy terror that had been upended on her at the sight of the creature kept her moving towards the other side of the station. Her mind was a daze, but she knew her mission: make sure her father's death wasn't for nothing and keep her brother safe.

— — —

"Everyone line up!" a guard shouted, walking towards the siblings' side of the station. "Line up for examination!"

Murmurings permeated the room, thick with confusion and fear.

 _Examination?_ Miyako wondered, hugging her brother close as they lined up behind an elderly woman and her grandchild. _What for?_

Her head was a mess of hot and cold now, her forehead misty with sweat as she fought to remain lucid. _Why do I have to get a fever now, when Tomio needs me?_ Miyako wondered, breaths heavy.

"Onii-chan, are you alright?" Tomio's voice asked from beside her. Miyako immediately nodded, bringing her sleeve to cover her mouth. The last thing she needed was to get him sick.

"Fine," she panted, wincing as a sharp crack of pain laced through her skull. "I'm fine."

Noticing the girl's clear shade of sickness, the people near Miyako shied away, allowing for a buffer between themselves and the pallid girl. The guards picked up on this change quickly, walking over.

"Miss, are you alright?" one of the guards asked. Miyako attempted a nod at him but found herself too dizzy to complete the action.

"Get back, she's been bitten!" another guard shouted. While the people around her clearly had no idea what the guard's words entailed, the fear in the guard's voice and the stances the rest of the guards took on—shifting from cautious to outright fearful and defensive, hands shooting towards the hilts of their guns—gave them enough of an idea. The crowd shrieked back, away from the panting girl whose skin was a tad too pale, her skin a tad too misty.

"Boy, get away from her!" the same guard shouted.

Miyako felt a prickle of anger. How dare he try and separate her from Tomio?

When Tomio didn't move, the guard took a step towards the siblings, causing Miyako to wrap her hands around Tomio and clutch him closer.

"Onii-chan," Tomio said, hesitation and concern clouding his voice.

"Boy, your sister's dangerous. Get away from her," the guard said, hand not leaving the hilt of his gun.

Miyako flinched, and immediately four guns were cocked at her, triggers clicking as fingers placed the first bit of pressure against them.

"No!" Tomio shouted, throwing his hands up to hug his sister. "Don't hurt Miyako-onii-chan!"

"You don't know what you're doing, boy," the guard said, taking a step forward.

Miyako tensed, registering a threat, and the guard adjusted his grip on the gun.

"Let go of your brother, Miyako-san," he said, his voice steady.

Miyako panted, eyes dully registering the guard's. His were bright, determined—much unlike hers at the moment, she would imagine.

 _What do I look like right now?_ she wondered. Her head felt like a bloated boulder on her shoulders, her mind like a bag of wet wool. _Why am I dangerous?_

"You have until the count of three to release your brother, Miyako-san. If you don't, I'll be forced to fire upon both of you," the guard said, voice without a trace of the hesitation or concern Tomio's had. "One. Two— "

Miyako's arms fell to her side, herself keeling over onto her knees as she continued panting. Her fever was getting worse, and fast.

The guard who'd stepped forward cocked his gun.

"Fi—"

"NO!" Tomio cried, throwing himself over his sister. "Don't hurt her!"

Murmuring broke out across the hall, the residents frightened and confused by what was going on. Were the guards turning on them? But what was wrong with the girl? Was she sick?

"Tsk." The guard dropped his gun to his side, stepping forward and tugging Tomio away from his sister. "You're too stupid for your own good, you know that?"

"No, stop! Don't hurt Onii-chan!" he shouted, squirming in the man's grip. "Don't hurt Miyako-onii-chan! Don't hurt her!"

The man paused, his grip steely around the boy's arm as he weighed his options.

"Very well. But she can't stay here."

— — —

Her way out had been a window on the second story of the station, as Miyako had discovered when she next came to. While it wasn't a long fall, she'd landed on her arm awkwardly, and her head had bounced twice before settling onto the floor. The dull pain that came with the impact served to momentarily clear her mind, and she dimly registered a voice calling her name. Her eyes fluttered at the burning sensation on her arm where skin had undoubtedly been scraped off by the rocky ground.

"Miyako-onii-chan!" the voice called again.

 _Tomio!_ Miyako thought, snapping up to see the boy's head poking out of the window. The guard was beside him, eyes narrowed.

"Tomio!" she called as her brother was pulled out of sight, her voice cracking.

"He'll be safe!" the guard called, pulling the window close behind him.

Too weak to protest, Miyako felt her head falling again.

— — —

Screams roused her this time, and her eyes snapped open to spot a horde of lava-eyed creatures crawling over the station.

 _Tomio!_ Miyako thought sharply, adrenaline pulsing through her as she forced herself to her feet. The fog in her head cleared, and although the pain remained, Miyako found that she could move.

Her feet carried her briskly towards the station and past the gaping hole of a doorway the Kabane had themselves burst through, the monsters too busy swarming their cache to notice the new arrival.

 _Tomio,_ she thought, her brother's name filling her mind. _Tomio._

Her eyes darted around the room, vaguely registering Kabane feasting on fallen townsfolk before catching on the center of the rabble: guards lined up on the side of a train, half of them working to keep the Kabane at bay, and the other half attempting to carve a way through the crowd of Kabane on the tracks.

 _Tomio!_ Miyako thought, eyes fixing on a particular black-haired boy taking cover amongst the guards as a Kabane broke the ranks and charged towards the train. _No! Tomio!_

A growl ripped itself from her throat, and her vision reddening. Her steps carried her towards the Kabane in quick succession, the crowd of beasts beside her a blur as she zeroed in on the immediate threat to her brother's safety.

"No you don't!" she shouted, flinging herself towards the Kabane and tackling it to the ground. Fear was not a factor when it came to her brother's safety, and she found that the Kabane's skull was softer than she'd imagined under her fists. Her blows were frenzied, one after the other, and the Kabane's skull slowly flattened under the onslaught.

A sharp pain sprouted on her arm while she was readying her next strike.

"You!" she roared, snapping around and punching the Kabane that had bitten her. It soared back, lost in the flood of lava-eyed monsters surging towards their new target, who met them head on, unafraid. Every moan was matched with a yell, every pair of snatching arms with a fist, elbow, or foot as Miyako fought through the wave. The Kabane were but weak, insignificantly slow bodies of soft flesh in her quest to protect Tomio, and the slick of blood on her fists meant that her childhood karate lessons—unorthodox and rare as they were—were finally paying off.

Soon, the tracks were clear of all but a few lingering Kabane, with Miyako working to clear the last of the rabble so the train could finally leave. However, the locomotive seemed to have no intention of doing so despite its humming engine.

"What are you doing? Leave!" Miyako shouted at the guards who seemed as shocked as they were wary. Silence greeted her from the train, but screams from her left drew her attention.

 _What are they doing? They're going in the wrong direction,_ Miyako thought, gritting her teeth as she watched a pack of guards scramble desperately for the wall. _Wait…_

Snapping around to look at the train's path, Miyako saw a formidable steel gate in the track's wake.

 _They must be trying to open it!_ she realized, immediately taking off for the wall the guards were gunning for. Ahead of her were a few humans, a horde of Kabane, and some boxes, but Miyako kept moving, herself just out of reach for the pursuing Kabane that seemed drawn to her like piranhas. The guards there were valiantly attempting to gun down the nearest Kabane, and although they were able to bring down a few of the monsters, the ones they shot down were quickly replaced by others in the tumultuous swirl of Kabane bloodlust.

Miyako arrived, striking down the nearest Kabane as the guards watched with shocked awe, their surprise distracting them briefly before they managed to recover themselves and continue shooting a way through the crowd of Kabane.

One guard broke away from the group, sprinting over to a glass-encased metal stand—the control panel. Breaking open the panel's glass shell, he clicked a key into place and slammed his fist down on a button. The station gates groaned open, their progression up slow and steady as the guard who opened them shrieked his burial under a pack of Kabane.

 _Thank god. Tomio's safe,_ Miyako thought, kicking another Kabane out of the way. _Now I just need to get over—_

An explosion echoed from above, and Miyako looked up just in time to see the station roof come crashing down.


	2. of red stars linked with chains

_Author's Note: Back with another chunk of the story! Updates for this fic will probably be a little on the slower side, but I am planning on finishing it. Suggestions, tips, and criticisms are welcome in the review box, as are compliments! Hope you like it :)_

* * *

 _Tomio,_ Miyako thought dimly, cracking open her eyes. Stone met her—stone and splintered wood.

"Uhh," she groaned, attempting to shift onto her side. Finding herself unable, Miyako registered that she was pinned under a collapsed column.

"God, no," she moaned, trying to kick her legs.

The rubble shifted slightly, surprising Miyako.

 _I can still feel my legs,_ she realized, relief flooding her system. She wouldn't die here, pinned until some wandering Kabane came along and made a meal of her.

 _If I do this right, I should be able to pull myself out from under this,_ she thought. _No, not if,_ she corrected. _When, because I will get out of this mess. I will, because I need to find Tomio and protect him._

Bracing her arms against the ground, Miyako pulled one leg, then two, from under the collapsed stone, her teeth gritted until the last toe came loose.

— — —

Something was very wrong with her.

After somehow maneuvering herself out from under the station rubble, Miyako realized that—her fever finally gone—her skin had turned an ugly shade of pale, and her hair—upon examination and after plucking a few strands—had apparently turned white. Unable to find any mirrors in the station, Miyako had ventured through town, since the Kabane seemed to have all but deserted the place after the remaining humans had fled or been eaten. Her feet carried her back to her home where she'd last seen her parents, smiling jovially as they waved their children off to play tag.

Upon arriving, Miyako realized that the blood splatters were exactly as she'd last seen them, with the addition of a few in the courtyard. She found herself unable to examine them, instead just collapsing into a crying heap beside them, angry and despaired when she realized that her parents' bodies were missing.

 _Monsters!_ she thought, sobbing. _They ate the entire bodies, not leaving a single shred for me to mourn!_

After her crying subsided, Miyako wandered into her room again and checked the small mirror she'd owned. When she registered the figure in the glass, she flinched back in shock, then crept forwards again, raising a hand to her face to confirm that the pale, red-eyed girl she saw was indeed herself. Her hair—previously a warm shade of brown—had blanched in color even more than her skin and taken on an airy, gossamer feel. Her blue eyes—the eyes her mother had passed down to her, the ones that reminded her of the strong woman—were now a piercing red, dark and bloody.

 _I—I'm a monster,_ she realized, putting down the mirror. Although the bites on her shoulders and arms had healed—surprisingly fast but well—that didn't change the fact that Miyako now looked the part of an entirely new person. It was when she was examining her arm, however, that Miyako found the first sign of danger: her vein seemed, rather than dark against her pale skin, light, almost as if they shone.

 _God, no,_ she thought, stripping off her clothes in her panic. If there was one thing to confirm or disprove her fears, it would be that glowing organ in her chest…

And it glowed like a sun in a dark sky of despair.

— — —

She was a Kabane.

Miyako finally understood why the guards told her brother to get away from her. She would have told him to too if she'd known what was happening at the time. Clearly, the Kabane passed their condition—or whatever it was—around through their bites, which would explain why the town was filled with bloodstains but missing bodies. Everyone who'd been bitten and died had turned into Kabane, including her parents. Her only consolation was that Tomio was still alive somewhere out there, having avoided the fate of being turned into a Kabane like his sister.

There was, however, a flaw in this logic: Miyako didn't feel like a Kabane. She looked like one, yes, and possessed their characteristic strength, speed, and stamina, but she hadn't become a mindless monster. Her necklace, tight as it was, separated her relatively human-looking head from the glowing veins crawling over her body.

 _Was that it?_ she wondered, feet beating a steady rhythm against the train tracks. Walking on the train tracks was dangerous, sure, but Miyako wasn't afraid of running into trains; she'd be lucky to run into one, even if it ran her over. _Was the tightness of the necklace the separator between my being a human and a Kabane?_

Such seemed rather dumb—simple. There was clearly still blood beating into her head, or why was she still alive? A better tell was the question as to whether or not Miyako hungered for human blood, and that was a definite no. However, Miyako was also acutely aware that she hadn't felt like eating human food in well over a day. Did that mean—

 _No. I'm not a Kabane,_ she thought fiercely. _I'm Hishima Miyako, and I'm out looking for my brother, Tomio, to protect him._

Her feet beat on.

— — —

She definitely was a Kabane, Miyako realized, heaving up the onigiri she'd forced down. The only "appetizing" part of the previously well-loved food was the tuna inside, and even that seemed too _off_ for her newly sensitive stomach.

 _I want something heavier. Less salty, more iron-filled,_ she thought, bile creeping up her throat as the thoughts registered. _I'm becoming a monster._

She coughed, then gurgled water in an attempt to rid her throat of the threatening burning sensation.

 _No, I can't become a Kabane,_ she thought stiffly, clutching at the pendant at her neck and squeezing. _I need to protect Tomio._

— — —

 _Tomio's out there somewhere,_ Miyako thought with a smile, journeying on along the tracks. Her goofy younger brother—naive and clueless as he was—continued to breathe somewhere down the train track. His smile was what kept Miyako going forwards, step after step.

Her body healed quickly now, and she'd taken the liberty of cleaning herself up when she remembered how the Kabane had behaved around blood—like crazed sharks, frenzied by bloodlust. Without the metallic scent of blood clinging onto her like a red flag, the Kabane she passed failed to notice her until she made her presence known to them. This allowed Miyako to pick and choose her battles—most of which she opted to let pass rather than fight since her priority was travel.

 _I need blood too now,_ she thought with a shiver of disgust. Repeated attempts at keeping down various foods—greens, grains, dairy—had solidified this fact, and Miyako had been horrified to find that her "favored" food had been a slab of fresh meat still sitting in a pile of blood.

Despite being a few days old, and despite the sickeningly sweet smell of near-rot wafting up from it, the bloody, coagulated mess had sung to her appetite like no other. Her first bite had been heaven until her hazy, energy-deprived mind cleared itself enough for her to spit the piece back out before she doubled over, retching in disgust.

Failing to eat, however, was a dreadful mistake Miyako learned the hard way. It was a ticking time bomb whose warning blips Miyako had tried to smother with ignorance. The first time her Kabane side flared up, Miyako thought she'd blacked out. That is, until she realized that she'd ended up devouring a streetside dog in her hunger, her blood-soaked hands dyed as red as the mangled body lying prone at her feet when her consciousness returned.

After that, Miyako was careful to bring food along with her at all times—food being meat, but never fresh. Finding prepared meats in abandoned towns was the easy part of her meal, despite how rare they came, and the girl always dreaded having to eat. Dried and salted meats made her stomach churn, but she was able to keep them down after some practice. She was sure her body was a wreck after consuming meal after nausea-inducing meal, but Miyako didn't care about that at this point. She was alive and moving, and the Kabane inside her would have to get used to it.

Still, her new status wasn't without any benefits either, and the powers she gained were arguably worth the humanity she gave up if the power to protect Tomio meant anything in that respect. Her strength, speed, and senses were clearly above that of the Kabanes'. Her stamina, too, had seen an exponential increase, and Miyako had already seen her new healing factor.

 _The human me was unable to protect Tomio,_ she thought, adjusting the bag on her shoulder as she trekked on. _But now, as a Kabane, I'm strong enough to protect him properly._

— — —

She was running—her own fault, really, although the shock factor of being chased by a glowing-eyed Kabane had long since worn off. Having unwisely chosen to attempt to sneak past a Kabane clearly starved for blood, Miyako wasn't all too surprised when it had let out a roar and given chase. The Kabane—a hefty fella, perhaps in his mid-thirties or so—would perhaps have been a father in life. In death, however, he was no more than a mere animated slab of hunger, a caged heart shining of life in death.

 _This is really annoying,_ Miyako thought, continuing to run at a brisk pace down the length of the track. The Kabane in pursuit was pretty fast for a moving puppet of meat, and she was beginning to feel the chewing edges of hunger herself. However, opening the box of dried jerky would only serve to enrage the trailing monster, and although Miyako was sure that Kabane only frenzied over fresh meat—the fresh, sharply metallic scent doing wonders for their psyche—she also knew that the scent of meat, even dried and near-bloodless—was enough to catch a hungry Kabane's attention. And the one behind her was hungry indeed.

Spotting an abandoned outpost—that was the assumption these days since all buildings were abandoned—Miyako swerved, running towards the building. Once she was close enough, she jumped, latching onto the edge of the roof. Wrapping her fingers securely around the overhang, she swung her body into the air, completing a perfect arc midair and landing on both feet. Such feats of athleticism were easy for her nowadays, neither hard to execute nor repeat. It was another perk of being a Kabane—or half-Kabane, rather. Truth be told, Miyako had no idea what she was anymore, nor did she care. She thought like a human—wasn't that enough?

She laid flat on the roof, peeking over the edge to watch as the Kabane came running over, a snarl on its lips. Slobber leaked from one side of its face where it looked like the lower jaw had frozen up in a case of partial rigor mortis.

 _Are Kabane really dead, or are they slowly dying?_ Miyako wondered, not risking a breath in case her pursuer heard. The Kabane slowed, looking around carefully before wandering into the station and disappearing from sight. _I should dispatch him now—while he's still alone._

It was an easy thought—"dispatching" the Kabane sounded simple, but in practice, it was to cut down a human-sized, human-shaped target that was previously a being that breathed, thought, and felt just as much as Miyako did. She may as well be cutting down herself—or an actual human.

Obviously, the same moral argument had run through her head many a time, each with a new array of factors, and each with its own nuances. The katana she had picked up felt like dead weight at her hip, weighing Miyako down both physically and mentally. She'd killed Kabane when she was protecting her brother, but that was out of self-defense. Here, now, she'd be killing to prevent—prevent what?

 _To prevent him from chasing me,_ Miyako thought, her hand clenching around the hilt of her blade. _To prevent him from hurting someone else._

With that thought in mind, the girl felt around for a piece of the cracked roof, hurling the painted wood at the ground below her. The projectile rebounded off the ground with a hollow "thunk," stirring dust up in its wake as it fell back and settled. From inside the house, an array of rustling, banging, and crashing sounded before the Kabane came stumbling out of the entrance, snarling in fury as it looked around quickly for its prey.

 _I'm sorry,_ Miyako thought, dropping down from the roof and directly onto the Kabane, using its solid flesh to absorb the brunt of her impact. Her katana flashed through the air, catching sunlight as it arced towards the creature's pale neck. The tip vanished for a split-second, reappearing with a sliver of crimson as the Kabane's anger morphed into confusion. Surprise was etched over its features as its head fell back, its body careening forwards and falling at Miyako's feet with a dull "thump."

 _I—I did it!_ she thought, shock freezing her features as she pulled her blade in front of her to stare at the droplets of blood tracing its sides. She hadn't been sure as to whether or not she was strong enough to decapitate a man—speed had been her strong suit as a human, not strength—but it seemed that her new status had heightened her physical abilities enough to do just that.

Looking down at the body sprawled below her, inelegant and leaking blood as red as any human's, Miyako felt a growing sense of nausea claw at the interior of her stomach. She'd just killed a man—perhaps no longer a human, but a man nonetheless. Someone who once perhaps had a family, smiled and laughed with them, ruffling his son's hair affectionately or patting his daughter on the back comfortingly. The unnamed, unhonored, unknown person below her had a name that she would never learn, a life she would never hear, and a face she now couldn't bear to look at, let alone try and remember.

Turning on her heel, Miyako broke into a run, intent on getting away from her handiwork as fast as she could. Her katana was still at her side, splayed at the awkward angle she held it at as she ran, distance being her priority. Her mind was devoid of thought as her feet carried her further along the tracks, the straight, metal plates—parallel as they were—but a dark grey blur below her feet, catching sunlight she didn't register.

Her brother—he was out there, and she would find him. That was all that mattered.

— — —

That Kabane preferred blood was apparent. Why they sought the viscous liquid, though, was a mystery that remained unanswered until Miyako finally decided to crouch down and examine one that she'd cut down. Decapitation was her method of choice, since their torsos had always seemed too tough a target for her swords. Her own body was the same, not that Miyako dared look at it much; her blood-soaked diet was enough reminder of her inhumanity. Picking through the remains of a stranger was nauseating in a different way, but less painful.

The area around the heart, upon inspection, appeared to be encased in webs of hardened iron, like a cage trapping in tatters of the human soul that previously inhabited the body. The smell, though, was what really clued her in; Kabane smelled like concentrated death—massacres' worth of blood coagulated into one body—but above all, they smelled like the blacksmith's, the metallic tang in the air around them cutting as clearly into Miyako's nose as the molten metal of the blacksmith's forge.

Iron—that was the key to the Kabane's glowing eyes and armored hearts. Blood contained iron, which the Kabane sought out to burn in their own biological forges, replenishing their energy and reinforcing the cage around their hearts.

However, through self-experimentation, Miyako had found that she could stomach meat, especially fresh, raw pieces dripping with blood. Kabane left bodies alone, but, when hungry enough, Miyako found that her body would lower its standards and accept flesh as well—likely because tissue still contained iron, although in smaller quantities. Eating meat didn't sate her the same way blood did, but with some self-discipline, Miyako was able to achieve near-optimum levels on meat when the forests thinned out. Sometimes dried or salted meats were all she had on hand, and stomach aches were nothing compared to aching hungers.

— — —

Another tremor wracked through her, pants and gasps filling the air despite her efforts to smother them. She'd run out of meat—her own fault, having obstinately refused to stop at the last town to search for new rations. The sixty-seven-mile trek between the last town and the next had seemed manageable, especially since Miyako generally averaged around eighty miles or more per a day. Her new physicality made such feats an easy task, although she often pushed the distance to a hundred or so since every town had seemed more desecrated, less hopeful than the last. Sometimes she'd wondered if her brother really _was_ still alive—what were the chances the train made it this far anyway? Its fuel tanks were limited, and the multitudes of Kabane were relentless.

Still, Miyako kept herself moving—hoping—by living on the assumption that, if the train had really succumbed to the molten-eyed armies, the girl would have found the empty, blood-splattered shell of the iron vehicle. That hope drove her, and it had lead her to her current situation, her hunger gnawing fiercely at her psyche. Her current pangs felt different from the previous ones; they were more insistent, less pleading than demanding. The Beast inside her roared its wants fiercely, its voice resounding off the recesses of her mind.

 _Blood!_ it shouted, pounding its fists. _Flesh! Death!_

 _No!_ Miyako thought, clutching her arms as another shudder shook through her. The pangs had rendered her immobile, and although the girl had managed to stumble off the open tracks and into the shadowed trees, if a Kabane happened to pass by right now, it would have a good chance at finding her. Her pants were stirring up a storm of sound, and she wouldn't be moving anytime soon.

 _Want food!_ the voice inside her demanded again, leaving no room for question. _Want food now!_

A cry of frustration ripped from her lips, animalian in sound. Her control slipped, and the girl found herself rising against her will, her limbs moving of their own accord. Mustering her strength, she threw herself against the nearest tree in an unsuccessful attempt to throw her body off balance so that she'd fall to the ground again. The voice inside her was surprised at the impact, and Miyako seized the chance to withdraw her blade, slapping her arm down on it. The searing pain of metal cutting into her flesh tore another cry from her lips, this one sounding of pain, frustration, and triumph as she finally gathered enough of her consciousness to crash herself back onto the ground.

Her success was short-lived, however; the metallic salt of blood incited a thrash from The Beast, and it broke through its weak bindings easily. Miyako's dripping arm went to her mouth, and her tongue lapped greedily at the warm liquid. _Blood!_ The Beast sang joyfully, its volume blotting out Miyako's protests as her consciousness darkened.

 _NO!_ Miyako shouted, rising above the creature. The black-shrouded figure looked behind its shoulder, as if only now realizing that it wasn't alone. _I'm in control here!_

Using her free arm to jerk the bloodied one away from her mouth, Miyako tightened her grip on the wound, tearing a cry from both her and The Beast. The creature's molten eyes dimmed as it fell back, melting into the shadows behind the panting girl. Her arm stung fiercely, but she'd managed to retain her sanity.

 _It isn't closing up,_ Miyako realized, raising the wound and examining it carefully. Blood continued to flow freely, like a sickeningly sweet waterfall of life. Her exponentially faster healing rate was something that she'd had counted on whenever she was injured, but her current wound seemed to be as unresponsive as it would have been a few dozen Kabane bites ago.

 _Is it because I'm too hungry?_ she wondered. Pushing limits was not an option, it seemed. She would have to be more careful in the future.

A rustle sounded behind her—over thirty meters away, but in her agitated state it may as well have been right next to her. Her eyes pierced through the darkness, zeroing in on a frightened doe that had frozen in its tracks, realizing the danger.

 _I'm sorry,_ Miyako whispered silently, her body already darting towards the warm flesh, the savory blood pumping through arteries and veins.


	3. Ashen grey cracked fires come

_Author's Note: Alright! After a month-long break from writing this, I'm back with another chapter! Cross the "this story's going to be short and sweet"—it's going to pretty long. 20k at least, so definitely not short, but I'll aim for sweet. Also, I don't really know what qualifies as "Rated M," but since there's a decent amount of bloodiness in here—not a lot, and not exactly super descriptive, but decently descriptive enough—I'll be changing the rating to "M," just to be safe._

 _That said, I hope you enjoy this next chapter! Miyako's really growing on me, and I hope you like her too :) Follow if you don't mind my update speed, and leave a review if you have anything to say!_

* * *

Miyako passed many villages in her travels, but none so freshly overrun as the one she came upon now. The telltale smog of burning fires blackened the sky long before the acrid smell of smoke wafted into her nostrils, followed by the sharp, sourly metallic scent of blood.

 _Freshly spilled. There's a chance of survivors,_ Miyako thought, quickening her steps. Trackside refugees. Train riders. _Tomio._

 _Tomio,_ Miyako thought, breaking into a sprint. _I'm coming, Tomio._

Her feet thudded over the dirt, stirring up clouds of dust as she progressed towards the stone-walled settlement. Columns of brown-black smoke trailed into the ashy sky like smoke trails of vengeful spirits, demons descending towards burning houses to retrieve the few lingering souls that had managed to escape the black claws of fate.

The solid metal gates were still open when Miyako arrived, a blood-stained train haphazardly wedged between them. Scattered nearby were bodies of Kabane and humans alike, varied as much in death as in life. Wounds ranged from clean-cut to outright jagged, almost as if blown so by a hand grenade. From what Miyako could see, it seemed like the settlement walls had assigned patrols of guards; the katana-carriers were designated by forest-green bandanas tied around their right arms, browned by blood and grime as their bodies hit the ground.

 _Dead. Dead. Dead,_ she thought, eyes skimming over the bodies sprawled around the train. _All dead._

A scream broke the humming crackles of the burning wreckage, and Miyako snapped into motion, sprinting in the direction of the sound.

It was a child's scream.

 _Tomio,_ Miyako thought, rounding a corner so abruptly she felt the earth beneath her feet give and sink a bit. That thought, however, flew out of her head briskly when she saw an ashen-skinned figure dart forwards at the intersection ahead.

 _Kabane,_ she thought, her katana in hand instantly.

Another Kabane was in the middle of crossing the intersection when Miyako arrived—a woman, kimono tattered and bloody. Miyako's blade flashed towards her without a thought, severing her left arm, then her head. The severed sections landed on the ground will dull thumps, but Miyako's blade was already arcing towards her next target.

The voice sounded again, shrill with fright, and Miyako pushed harder. Her movements became less fluid, more erratic, lashing out at whatever came her way. Kabane were felled quickly, the reflexive slashes nowhere near precise but cutting all the same. The final horde of Kabane were gathered around a tree, reaching for the small figure clutching desperately onto a high-hanging branch.

"Back off!" Miyako snarled, pouncing at the gray-brushed crowd blade-first. Using a combination of her elbows, knees, legs, and katana, Miyako fended off the drooling Kabane, knocking them back and cutting them down when they approached again. Bodies dropped one after the other, Miyako's breaths shorter with each gusty thump.

"Tomio!" Miyako shouted when she'd cut down the final standing Kabane, jumping up and grabbing a branch to swing herself onto the higher branches. The small, hunched pile finally opened up, a small, tear-stained face peeking out from between the gaps in the blue-green.

An unfamiliar face.

A snarl from down the street alerted Miyako to the approaching Kabane, and she made a snap decision.

"Hold on," she said, grabbing the boy and using his surprise to throw him over her left shoulder. "We're getting out of here."

With that, Miyako tipped herself off the branch she was crouching on, landing neatly on the ground below and shifting into a sprint for the gates she'd entered from. Her left hand around the boy's waist and her right around her katana, Miyako used a combination of her blade and her legs to fend off Kabane who got too close. Thankfully, the boy put up no resistance as she ran, remaining as light and present as a rag doll.

The gate in sight, Miyako took a leap, clearing the few Kabane who seemed to have figured out her exit and dashing out into the woods nearby, although still in the direction the tracks left the gates. The worst thing to do at the moment was to lose the tracks; finding them again was a pain, as she'd discovered after a few adventurous hunts for deer who'd put up a chase.

At the moment, Miyako's goal was to get away from the town she'd just left and continue along the tracks. The ruined train she'd seen earlier was of a different make than the one carved into her memory, which meant that Tomio—alive or not—was still somewhere down the tracks.

 _What do I do with this boy?_ she wondered, leaves crunching under her pounding feet. Her breaths were short and shallow now, strained. _I can't keep this speed up forever. Eventually, I'm going to have to take a break, and—_

A wall slammed into her, choking the air out of her lungs and sending her crashing towards the forest ground. Only just managing to land on her right side and spare the boy the brunt of the impact, Miyako found her body unresponsive and her lungs filled with cotton. Her muscles had turned into stone, her joints stiff and unyielding, unable to respond to signals thought but not given.

 _I pushed too hard,_ Miyako thought, her vision swimming into darkness.

— — —

Miyako snapped up, eyes flicking around the trees quickly. Her head ached, her muscles ached, and her neck…

 _My necklace!_ she thought, hand reaching up to clasp the locket hanging there. Feeling wetness, Miyako retracted her hand, seeing some faint blood on her fingers. _The chain cut in, but it didn't break._

A rustle above alerted her to the fact that she wasn't alone, and she looked up to see the boy she'd saved sitting hesitantly amongst the leafy branches.

 _He climbed up to save himself. I was too heavy for him to drag up, so he left me against the tree,_ Miyako realized. _Smart decision._

"How long was I out?" she asked, voice cracking. Her head swam, but she relished the opportunity to converse with another human. Conversation was nonexistent on her travels, and she'd taken to talking to animals and inanimate objects when they came around.

The boy, however, didn't answer, instead clutching his pants a little tighter as he stared at Miyako warily.

 _He doesn't trust me,_ Miyako realized with a sigh. _Well, I don't blame him._

"I came from the tracks. The villages—well, I haven't come upon one untouched by Kabane yet. You're the first survivor I've found. Usually, the bodies are long gone by the time I arrive," Miyako said. "You should come with me. I'm going to continue down the tracks, and I can protect you until we find a town that's safe."

The boy remained silent, eyes unblinking as they continued to observe her cautiously.

"I… I don't know what to do with you. You won't be safe if you wander off now, but you won't be safe if you come with me either," she admitted, frowning. "So… the choice is yours. I can do my best to protect you if you come with me, but… I don't blame you if you don't want to."

The silence from above continued unbroken, and Miyako figured that was enough of an answer.

"I'm sorry I can't do more for you," she said, rising from her place below the tree. Hesitating briefly, Miyako reached into her bag and pulled out some dried meat wrapped in cloth rags. "Here's some food. It won't taste good, but it'll keep you alive. I can't give you all of it, but I hope this is enough to get you to the next settlement down. I don't have a map, and I don't know where we are, but if you follow the tracks, you should reach another town soon enough."

Miyako stopped, finding herself out of words. "Good luck," she said, finding the saying to contain a bittersweet finality she didn't intend to express but unable to find words to soften the blow.

"Are you a Kabane?" a high-pitched voice rang out. It took Miyako a moment shake off her surprise at the sound of another human's voice. Lower than Tomio's yet higher and smoother than her own, the boy's voice cut in with a glint of suspicion—fear.

"I—" Miyako paused, unable to find the words. It was the question she dreaded—was she a Kabane? She'd asked herself this again and again, sometimes after burying bodies, and sometimes after biting into a bloody slab of animal flesh. The answer, though, remained biasedly constant. "No. I was bitten a long time ago, but I never lost my mind. Instead, I gained the strength to fight Kabane and find my brother."

The boy's face remained blank, his eyes equally inscrutable in their emotion, and Miyako figured that it was high time for her to leave.

"Goodbye," she said, offering a small smile to the boy. She didn't know his name, and she didn't think he'd tell her if she asked. So, with that, she turned away and made in the direction of the tracks.

 _He's probably going to end up dying,_ Miyako thought, heart aching a bit. The boy hadn't resembled Tomio at all; his eyes were too intense, his voice too low, and his hair black instead of brown and too short to be tied in Tomio's usual ponytail.

A thud from behind sounded, then the shuffling of leaves towards Miyako. Turning around, the girl was shocked to see the black-haired boy slowing to a walk beside her, an outstretched hand offering the meat she'd left behind.

"Kichirou," he said quietly. "Sasaki Kichirou."

"Hishima Miyako," Miyako said, a smile gracing her face again. "Nice to meet you, Sasaki-chan."

— — —

Kichirou had taken to Miyako's schedule with all the determination and discipline a child who looked around ten could muster, and Miyako found herself able to adapt and make up for his shortcomings.

To gain back some of the distance lost, Miyako had taken to carrying the boy on her back. The first time she'd offered, he'd shaken his head, but eventually it was clear that refusing would only inconvenience both of the travellers. So, whenever she sensed he was tired, Miyako would offer to let Kichirou ride on her back, herself speeding up to a more inhuman speed to make up for lost time.

Conversation was sparse and mostly one-sided, with Miyako asking the questions and Kichirou nodding or shaking his head. There wasn't much to talk about, and Miyako trod carefully around any touchy subjects, figuring that the boy wouldn't want to talk to her about them anyway. And, to his credit, Kichirou had refrained from asking any questions about Miyako's status as a non-human—not that Miyako had many answers to begin with.

From his wariness and the state of her wounds when she'd woken after escaping the town she'd found him in—that is, recently cleaned—Miyako deduced that Kichirou had tried to wipe her wounds with the spare clothing in her bag. As he did so, however, it seemed he'd also discovered the spiderweb of glowing cracks flowing out from her heart and onto her shoulders, which had sent him into hiding in the trees. Despite this discovery, it seemed like Kichirou trusted her to a certain extent; his eyes held a certain amount of fear and wariness around her, but he still shied towards her when bushes rustled in the dark.

Miyako had dreaded mealtimes with the boy. As the human, the rations of dried meat were automatically redirected to Kichirou while Miyako stuck with hunting, only eating some dried meat to keep up pretenses. Having seldom lit fires—they were both a signal to the Kabane and a hazard since, in order to avoid the Kabane, most fires had to be started in the denser parts of the forest—Miyako was usually able to slip away and snag an animal when Kichirou was resting, telling the boy that she rarely felt hungry when he seemed curious.

Eventually, however, the dried meat had disappeared, and Miyako was forced to share the bloody reality of her meals: she had to have raw meat or blood once in a while. Such was the conclusion of repeated self-experimentation, all of which connected the surfacing of her inner "beast" to long periods without fresh sources of iron. To her surprise, however, Kichirou hadn't even looked a bit surprised when Miyako bit into the uncooked half of the drained rabbit she'd saved for herself, instead calmly waiting for the legs roasting over the fire to finish browning.

 _He's seen something. Bad. Most likely as a result of the Kabane,_ Miyako thought, dropping her eyes from the boy and focusing on keeping watch instead. Survivor's guilt—such was the curse of the living. Miyako herself was plagued by it, her parents and townsfolk often gracing her dreams, screaming and wailing as they faded into redness. Tomio had been featured in a few of the darker dreams, sadly shaking his head and smiling at her. Those were the dreams Miyako despised—dreaded—because that was the one possibility Miyako refused to entertain.

 _Tomio left on a train. He survived, and I won't believe that he's dead until I find that engine, that crew, and ask them face-to-face. He's alive out there, and I'll find him._

Such was the mantra Miyako had developed over the weeks on the road, and such was the mantra that left her feeling more dead than alive at times.

— — —

Somewhere along the road, killing Kabane had become second nature. No longer were they humans with untold stories who'd been transformed into mindless, blood-seeking monsters; they were monsters who looked like humans, deceptive until death with their likeness to the living. Guilt had all but faded from Miyako's mind by the time she'd found Kichirou, and—since the boy didn't seem affected by Miyako's cutting them down either—it was now only a hypothetical tangent she sometimes followed mentally when she was keeping watch as Kichirou slept, a vague set of dubious questions Miyako no longer felt bound to have answers for. Kabane were the enemy that took her family, separated her from Tomio, and made her what she was. They were the mindless bodies that constantly threatened the safety of her and now Kichirou, the threat that kept her on her feet and her hands ready to reach for the sword at her hips.

While she'd love to have called it her best friend, the truth was that Miyako's katana had broken multiple times, either chipping until it finally gave or outright snapping during combat. Upon closer examination of a Kabane she'd cut down, she'd discovered the reason for the sword's downfall: Coiling around the Kabane—and especially around their hearts—were metal-like cages, sturdy and unyielding in their hardness. Most katanas were completely unable to cut through this metal barrier, only able to sever limbs and heads until the reinforced bones proved too much for them as well.

So, Miyako was left scouring every town for swords. Sure she'd seen spears, axes, and even guns, but she preferred the simplicity and efficiency that came with a well-crafted blade, and since such a blade was rarefound as it was, she soon took to carrying spare blades on her back. Currently, she had three, but at her height she'd owned an amazing seven katanas.

It was around then that she realized that she was strong enough to wield a katana with one hand, which led to her current attempts at dual-wielding. Having only ever heard stories of rounin who wielded two katanas at once, Miyako was a mix of pleased and dismayed to discover that the same was possible for her. The antagonists of children's tales never seemed as close as when Miyako finally managed to decapitate two Kabane at once—an accomplishment she tried not to think about.

Since all her blades gave in eventually, be it wear and tear on Miyako's part or on the Kabanes', Miyako tended not to get too attached to them. If she were to name a favorite, it would have to be the first katana she'd owned; the ornate handle had always seemed too expensive for anything Miyako would have ever owned had the Kabane not come, and she both loved and loathed the blade for that reminding her of that when she looked down.

— — —

"You want to find your brother."

Miyako looked at the Kichirou in surprise. This was the first time he'd initiated contact with her; usually, it was her asking him mundane questions in an attempt to strike small talk gold. It rarely worked, however, although sometimes she had been able to get a few sentences out of him before he clammed up. Having him ask her a question— _Well, more a statement than a question,_ Miyako thought wryly. B _ut something of a question all the same_ —left her feeling rather pleased.

"Yes. My brother—Hishima Tomio. He's a year younger than you at ten, and a lot more talkative too, mind you," she teased. When Kichirou didn't offer a response, Miyako cleared her throat. "Well, I promised my father that I'd look after him. That was his dying wish. Kabane—they overran our town, and I got bitten. He managed to escape on a train, and I've been chasing that train down the tracks ever since," Miyako said.

"How do you know he's not dead?" Kichirou asked.

Miyako snapped around, anger flaring. Kichirou flinched back from her, eyes wide

"Sorry. I just—I believe he's alive," she said, recoiling and looking away from the boy. "Tomio's alive. I haven't seen a single shred of proof to disprove that fact, so I'll keep going until I find him."

 _Or until I find his body._

The unspoken words filled the silence, unvoiced but heard all the same. Perhaps Kichirou had said them to himself in his mind, or perhaps he understood that Miyako couldn't say them herself. Either way, the silence continued from there, that particular conversation topic having reached its end.

"Did you have any siblings?" Miyako asked, figuring that she'd shared enough on her side to start asking about his.

Kichirou shook his head.

"Then it was just you and your parents?"

"Parent," Kichirou said, eyes dropping to his hands. "My mother died when I was young. Sickness."

"I'm sorry," Miyako said.

Kichirou's face remained curiously impassive, but it was clear from the way he continued to knit his fingers together, picking at his nails every time one of them caught his attention, that he wasn't.

 _He's a lot more mature than Tomio was,_ Miyako thought, turning away to hide the wry smile that crept onto her face when her brother's face appeared in her mind. _Tomio… I'm not giving up on you. I never will._

"How long have you been walking down the tracks?" Kichirou asked.

"Today will be the sixty-eighth day," Miyako replied instantly. Each day was another mental tally, another day in her quest of finding her brother. She never lost count, despite not keeping physical records; the numbers were the only divider between "today" and "tomorrow," and Miyako's days didn't contain enough excitement to cause her to forget to count.

Kichirou seemed taken aback at her answer, perhaps having assumed that Miyako was a survivor like himself, recently struck by tragedy and forced to move. With her answer, it must have occurred to him that she was no stranger to the endless hike down the tracks.

 _Will he be reassured knowing that I'm sufficient protection against the Kabane,_ Miyako wondered, _or will he be plagued by worry seeing that my journey appears to be one that's never-ending?_

"Do you want to take a break soon?" Miyako asked, seeing the sun graze the treetops. Sunset would occur within the next hour, meaning that they'd been walking for a good two or three hours.

Kichirou shook his head, adjusting the bag on his back and picking up the pace a bit. His neck had a faint sheen of sweat, but it seemed that he wasn't about to admit his exhaustion just yet.

Smiling, Miyako matched his pace.

— — —

"Don't come in," Miyako said sharply, reaching a hand back to stop Kichirou in his tracks. The boy rolled to a halt behind her, freezing. "Let's… Let's check out a different house."

Not giving the boy a chance to question her—not that he would have—Miyako turned heel and grabbed his arm, dragging him out of the house with her. The two were exploring a small town they'd found along the tracks, and—judging by the dust and long-dried bloodstains—it seemed the town had been deserted for a good month or so. Since their supplies were always looking to be restocked, Miyako had figured that even a long-deserted village might yield something useful. The first few houses had been relatively empty, delivering some well-worn clothes that were too big for Kichirou and too bulky for Miyako, but the fourth had unveiled a pair of still-decaying bodies.

 _A father and son,_ Miyako thought, glancing back at Kichirou. She hadn't let him see the bodies—hadn't even told him of their existence—but, by the tone of her voice and the urgency in her steps, she figured the sharp boy would be able to guess at what she'd found.

"I'm fine," Kichirou said. Miyako slowed her steps, looking at the boy in surprise. Kichirou met her eyes dully, tiredly. "You don't have to try and hide bodies from me. I've seen them before. Many of them."

 _Of course he has,_ Miyako thought. _I've killed Kabane in front of him, for heaven's sake, and he's seen his share of bodies in the other settlements we've passed through. Hiding this from him now… Well, it's a bit ridiculous, but… it seemed like the right thing to do._

"I'm fine," Kichirou repeated. Miyako hesitated before nodding.

"Okay," Miyako said. She paused, thinking it over for a moment before leading Kichirou to the next house over.

 _There wasn't anything useful in the last room anyway. Just dusty shelves and pottery,_ Miyako thought. _Dusty shelves, pottery, and a pair of bodies you don't need to see._


	4. for death, fight not in vain

_Author's Note: So, it's been a long minute since I updated this fic, but just know that however silent I may go, I'll never give up on any fic I start, so thank you to everyone out there who's tagging along for this ride._

 _I have, however, realized one major thing: Hinomoto is the size of Japan, meaning that it takes roughly 15 days or so for a human to travel across the mainland on foot, so it'd be even less for a Kabaneri like Miyako. Yet in my story, Miyako's spent months on the road by now—a clear violation of all canon laws, since Hinomoto is supposed to be a fantasy version of Japan. So, rather than attempting to change this, I ask for permission to exercise creative liberty; Miyako's time travelling along the tracks may not be realistic, but it's necessary for this story, so allow me to have her spend months travelling down a completely unrealistic, non-canon railroad that seems to stretch towards infinity and beyond. I didn't think this over properly when I came up with the idea for the fic, but I think changing it now will do more harm than good._

 _That said, thanks for reading my spiel, and here's the next part of the story:_

* * *

Miyako glanced back at Kichirou, eyes softening when she saw the boy's sleeping figure. The two had taken shelter in an old trackside watch house whose roof was sturdy enough to survive the pouring rain, which beat down on the worn metal in a symphony of impatient tapping. Having silently nominated herself as guard, Miyako sat by the door, turning her attention back to the sliver of moonlight that slipped through the curtains. They were closed, of course; Kabane weren't known for their night vision, but it was an unnecessary risk either way, even with her keeping watch. She needed little sleep these days—another side-effect of being bitten, probably—and besides boredom, she didn't mind it so much. Her nightwatch helped her clear her mind, and she sometimes wondered whether she was stopping for Kichirou's sake or her own.

Either way, Kichirou never questioned it. He followed her without complaint, never uttering a word when she told him to sleep or eat. His silence was as endearing as it was strange; she felt his trust in her clearly, but also felt the unbridged canyon between them, lonely as the moon that shined through heavy rainclouds.

Rain—it was cold, messy, and downright miserable to trod through, be it in the open on the tracks or in the shaded forest. There was a time when Miyako had felt complacent—even happy—when it rained, since the drizzles meant that the crops would be watered and the farmers' children could take the day off to rest and play. Now, though, it was a metaphorical expression of desolation—one where it was the sky doing the crying rather than Miyako, shedding tears for all the death it had and would still see.

 _Four,_ Miyako thought, frowning as she thumbed the hilt of her katanas, her eyes closed as she focused on the vibrations caused by the footsteps outside. _Two are within meters of the house, but not close to each other._

She rose, heading for the locked door.

 _Four,_ she thought, drawing a katana. _This should be more than enough for four._

— — —

Miyako ran through the forest, neither breaking sweat or catching breath as she kept her pace in the direction of the tracks. On her back, Kichirou was silent but awake, his breathing lacking the steady pattern he adopted when he slept.

"Are you afraid of them?"

Miyako blinked but maintained her pace, still getting used to the boy's jarring method of initiating conversation.

"I used to be," she said, her feet padding out a steady beat beneath her, "but not anymore."

"Why not?"

"I'm stronger than them."

"But they can still kill you."

"I'll kill them first."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm stronger than them."

"But what if there's too many of them?"

"There's never too many of them."

"But what if there is?"

Miyako paused to consider the given scenario, the beat of her feet still strong below her.

"Well, I guess I'd die," she concluded.

Silence ensued for a few seconds, Miyako's quick, steady steps the only sound in the night.

"Don't die."

The voice was so soft Miyako almost missed it—but she didn't. Instead, she missed a step, pitching forwards.

Gritting her teeth, she thrust her weight back, twisting in the air as she found her balance again.

"What are you saying?" she demanded once she'd managed to catch her breath, annoyance sparking. "Of course I won't die. You asked me what would happen if there's too many for me to kill, and there was only one answer to that. But that's not a real situation—there have never been too many to kill, and there won't ever be, okay? So just—"

A soft sniffle caused Miyako to cut herself off.

"Kichirou," she said, her voice immediately losing its edge as she crouched, setting the boy down gently before turning to face him.

"Look at me, Kichirou. I'm not going to die, alright?" she asked, hands set firmly on his shoulders. "I haven't died, and I don't plan on doing so, especially not to some dumb Kabane. You can trust me."

"Really?" he asked, raising teary eyes.

"Really," Miyako said, hugging the boy. "You can trust me, Kichirou. I'll make sure you're safe."

The boy was silent, but Miyako felt him relax in her arms.

 _Kichirou, Tomio—I'll protect you both_ , she thought, closing her eyes. _Just wait for me to find you, Tomio. Wait for me._

— — —

"Well look what I found," Miyako said, grinning as she walked over to Kichirou, who was sitting by the fire, staring wide-eyed at the animal dangling from her hand.

"Is that a chicken?" he asked when he'd recovered from his initial shock, his eyes still trained on the bird twisting back and forth in a futile attempt to escape Miyako's grip at the base of its wings.

"Yep!" Miyako said gleefully. "I'm guessing a flock of them escaped the Kabane attack on the last town, lucky for us. I'll be right back," she said, making to head back into the woods. They'd spent the entire day on the move, since Miyako had wanted to get over the mountainous patch they were in as soon as possible, and she could feel hunger clawing at her belly.

"Wait, are you going to kill it?" Kichirou called from behind her.

Miyako paused, turning.

"What else?" she asked, just managing to keep her impatience out of her voice.

Kichirou didn't reply.

"What's so different between this and, say, the rabbits we had yesterday?" she asked, brows knitting. She couldn't recall anything from their earlier conversations that could spark this outburst.

"You didn't show me the fish or rabbits while they were still alive," Kichirou mumbled, eyes dropping guiltily.

"Well, what do you want me to do?" she asked, frowning. It was easy to keep her grip on the struggling bird, but its sharp cries were growing tiresome.

Kichirou was silent next to the fire, eyes downcast.

 _Well, whatever,_ Miyako thought, sighing as she set her frantic prisoner, who sprinted for the undergrowth immediately. "There," she said, watching out of the corner of her eye as the last glimmer of tail feathers disappeared into the woods. "Do you want fish instead? Or rabbit again?"

The boy stayed silent by the fire, not meeting Miyako's eyes.

 _It's the shock of seeing a live animal,_ Miyako realized. She'd always been careful not to kill the animals in front of Kichirou, but she'd forgotten about keeping live ones away from him as well.

"We kill to survive, Kichirou," Miyako said quietly. "We don't kill senselessly, like the Kabane."

"But we still kill," the boy said quietly, eyes dropping to his feet. "You still kill."

Miyako paused, momentarily at a loss for words. She did kill, didn't she? She killed animals, seeking them out in the forests to drain their blood. She chewed raw flesh to sustain herself, struck down Kabane without even bothering to register their faces.

"Well, I'm a Kabane," she said flatly. "I kill, so leave that part to me and stop worrying about it."

"But I don't want you to kill!" Kichirou cried, twisting to face her, tears glistening in the firelight. "I don't want you to be a Kabane, and I don't want you to—to—"

Miyako was at his side in an instant, scooping him up into a hug.

"Kichirou, you don't have to worry about me," she said. "I'm fine, and as much as I hate being a Kabane, I'm also thankful, because I'm now strong enough to protect you."

"B—but you—"

"Shh," Miyako said, patting the boy's back as he clung to her. "As long as you're fine, I'm fine," she said. "So don't be sad, alright? Or you're going to make me sad."

Kichirou nodded against her shoulder.

"Good," she said, lifting away. "I'll go find us that chicken again. You just wait here."

The boy nodded again, wiping at his face.

"C—come back soon," he stuttered.

"I will," Miyako said, smiling.

— — —

"How'd you learn to fight?"

Had she not been there to live through it all, Miyako would have never believed lengths Kichirou had come in opening himself up to her. Where in the beginning he was cold and distant, refusing to talk unless it was the only option available, he now initiated conversation multiple times a day, sometimes even about mundane things like how the sun was "really bright" that day or how a particular rabbit was "saltier than usual." In fact, there were days when Adrielle realized that Kichirou, the no-longer-sullen, no-longer-silent boy, may have initiated more conversations than she did herself.

"My father taught me," she replied, prodding the fire with a stick. "He was a kenjutsu instructor—the best and only one in town. I guess learning a dying art paid off."

"I thought girls weren't allowed to learn kenjutsu?"

"No, there's nothing that prevents them from learning it, but many people believe that they shouldn't. My father, though, believed that every person—man or woman—should be able to protect themselves."

"He taught you to use a katana?"

"Not at first. He would never willingly put a blade in his daughter's hands, so I had to learn the basics from watching him, practicing in secret. But it didn't take long for him to catch on; he caught me training with one of his bamboo shinai, and… I guess he figured that if I was so bent on learning to wield a katana, the least he could do is prevent me from hurting myself in the process."

Kichirou fell silent at that, his eyes focused on the crisping fish over the fire.

"Do you miss him?" he asked at last.

Miyako paused her prodding.

"Yes," she said quietly. "Even though I know that missing him won't bring him back, I do miss him, and my mother."

 _And Tomio,_ she thought silently.

"I miss my father too," Kichirou admitted, drawing his legs close. "He was always busy, so he didn't have a lot of time to play with me, but I—I miss him."

"Come 'ere," Miyako said, pulling the boy into her lap. "It's okay to cry," she said gently. "Bottling it up will only make it worse."

"I miss Otou-san," Kichirou said, the first glisten of fresh tears appearing at the corners of his eyes. "I miss Otou-san, and Ikeda-sensei, and Takeo-san, and Shika-san," he said, sobbing now. "I miss Moriko-san and Hisakawa-sama, and everyone else at school."

Miyako hugged the boy as he continued his list of names, his tears flowing freely.

 _Otou-san, Okaa-san, I won't let you down,_ she thought, clutching the pendant around her neck. _I'll find Tomio, and I'll protect him. I promise._

— — —

"Doesn't it hurt?"

Miyako paused, looking up from where she was dressing her wound. The two had just escaped from an infested town, Miyako taking a bite when she shielded Kichirou from a stray Kabane that'd wandered away from the main group while she was fighting.

"A bit," she admitted, resuming her wrapping, "but not as much as I remember. I think pain tolerance might be another perk of being bitten."

Kichirou fell silent, but his eyes stayed on Miyako's bandaged arm even after she slipped her coat back on.

"It'll just take a day or two to heal, and a week for the scar to fade. Here," she said, tossing the surprised boy one of the small, paper-wrapped loaves of bread they'd recovered from the deserted town. "Eat up. We should be getting closer. The towns are seeming more and more freshly-deserted."

Kichirou nodded, unwrapping the bread slowly.

Miyako leaned back, propping herself up with her hands and closing her eyes. There was a faint wind blowing about the forest, cooler now that the sun had set, and the woods were quiet, the Kabane were long behind them.

"I'll be right back," Miyako said, rising.

Kichirou nodded, focusing on the bread in his hands.

 _Funny, I never thought I could become less of a picky eater,_ Miyako thought, walking off into the woods. She couldn't sense anything too big nearby—just a few squirrels here and there, which, considering their size, wouldn't be enough for a meal.

 _A snack then,_ Miyako thought, crouching. She needed to keep up her energy, both to heal and to ensure that she would be in top shape, because she didn't have the option of blaming her failings on something other than herself.

A bushy-tailed critter scurried up a tree nearby, the sound of its claws scratching bark clear in Miyako's ears as she zeroed in on the squirrel

 _Tomio always liked squirrels,_ she thought, launching herself at the unsuspecting animal.

— — —

"Teach me to wield a katana."

Miyako snapped around to stare at the boy sitting at the campfire.

"No," she said firmly, turning and stalking off. "The only way you're picking up a blade is over my dead body."

"But it'll be too late then," Kichirou sniped back, stopping Miyako in her tracks. She grit her teeth.

"Tomorrow morning. I expect you to be fully rested and awake," Miyako said, not turning. "You'd do well not to believe that I'll take pity on your lack of experience."

— — —

Miyako winced, setting down the hem of Kichirou's shirt. She'd underestimated her strength, and while there wasn't any notable damage, the bruises blossoming over the boy's torso had her instantly regretting her decision to teach him to wield a katana.

 _How did my father manage?_ she wondered. Her own bruises were but faint memories in her mind, but as much as she'd hated the aching pain that followed her for days after every trip to the dojo, she'd suffered them proudly and silently.

 _Is it the same for him?_ she wondered, looking down at the sleeping boy.

Kichirou had taken to his lessons with determination, never asking her to stop, always asking for another round. Their lessons ended when Miyako felt they should—usually around sunset, since they spent the mornings moving—and although the boy was slowly improving, Miyako couldn't help but question the efficacy of the entire operation.

For one, Miyako was by no means a kenjutsu master like her father. In fact, she barely passed for proficient; her newfound strength was the real key to her skills, and although she did find herself improving slowly—her strokes becoming smoother, more instinctual—Miyako wondered how much she had to teach the boy before they'd hit a wall.

The more important reason, though, was that in reality, even if he were to master use of the katana, Kichirou would never be able to fight a Kabane. Miyako's superior strength and speed allowed her to utilize the sharpness of the katana to cut through the Kabane's limbs and neck, but even she couldn't make a dent on their torsos, where the web of glowing iron around their hearts seemed to shatter every blade she'd sent their way regardless of how hard or fast she swung. And since Kichirou could never hope to match Miyako's physical capabilities, he would never be able to hold himself against a Kabane aiming to kill him.

 _I'm basically leading him on,_ she thought, her gaze sliding to the smoldering fire, which had to be closely regulated so that it didn't grow big enough to give off too much smoke. Kabane were dull, but they were still keenly aware of the acrid scent of fire, which—in a forest—would quickly attract those curious enough to investigate.

 _Should I just stop the lessons now?_ Miyako wondered. Tomio had never been one for fighting, and he'd always hated it when their father forced him to the dojo for training. Where Miyako looked forward to the rare lessons, Tomio always tried to find excuses to get out of them, even willingly taking to housework when he was desperate enough. Their father, however, had been less than amused, holding firm to his belief that every human should be able to protect themselves if the need should arise.

"A man should hold his ground in a fight," he'd tell Tomio sternly whenever the boy fell during their sparring sessions. "How can you protect those precious to you if you can't even protect yourself?"

He was no kinder towards Miyako, though she'd figured out early on not to take his words at face value. However tough he seemed when they sparred, Miyako knew that her father only wished the best for his children. He'd grown up in a time when samurai and bushi were as commonplace as swordfights in the streets, and he'd known no higher honor than passing down the ways of the sword to his disciples.

 _He'd always known that Tomio and I wouldn't grow up to be like him, living by the sword,_ Miyako thought, her father's gentle eyes and calloused hands coming to mind. Her father had been a lot of things, stubborn and tough included, but never unreasonable. When Tomio pushed hard enough, he'd yielded, just as he did when Miyako proved her desire to learn the ways of the sword.

 _I wonder if Tomio's out there now, a katana at his side,_ Miyako thought. The thought of her brother wielding a real weapon rather than a bamboo shinai made her feel slightly ill, but she swallowed the feeling as soon as it came. Such was the world they lived in now—a world in which Kabane and death stalked side by side, making ruin of cities and warriors of children.

 _Tomio,_ she thought, prodding a new piece of wood into the embers beside her. _Wait for me._

— — —

"Kichirou, let's go," Miyako said, turning away from the ruins of an overturned train. Seeing the metal carcass had simultaneously raised and crushed her hopes, but once she'd confirmed that it wasn't the train she was looking for, she'd quickly lost interest.

"But we just—"

"We're probably close to a real town," Miyako said, nodding at what was left of the train beside her. "This wreck is recent—more so than the town. The train probably came through just a few days ago."

"Then," Kichirou said, eyes darting to the wreck. "Could there be…"

"No survivors," Miyako said curtly. "Let's move quickly. The Kabane were always leagues ahead of us, but it seems that we've finally caught up to them."

Without another word, Miyako spun away again, heading back towards the tracks that'd led them here. Footsteps from behind her told her that Kichirou was following.

"Do you really think there are still towns that haven't been destroyed?" he asked, slowing to a walk once he'd caught up to the her.

"Yes," Miyako replied, her response delivered without an ounce of hesitation.

Beside her, Kichirou fell silent, processing her words.

— — —

"Get on," Miyako said, crouching down.

Kichirou looked up in surprise before shaking his head vigorously.

"I can still—"

"It's faster if I carry you," she asserted, glancing back at the boy, who relented, climbing onto her back sullenly.

"You know, there's no point in acting tough around me," Miyako said as she settled into a jog, "if you're tired, just say so."

"I'm not—"

"Yes you are. You're hot and sweaty and looked like you ready to trip over the next stick that came your way."

Kichirou didn't respond to that, instead turning his face away to face his right.

"You don't have to prove anything to me, Kichirou," Miyako reminded him gently. "I promised to protect you, but not just from Kabane. Whether it's the rain or sore feet, all you have to do is ask."

Kichirou stayed silent, but his hands tightened slightly around Miyako all the same, loosening only after he'd drifted off to sleep.

 _What a liar,_ Miyako thought, an amused smile stretching across her lips as she fixed his grip around her neck. _It didn't even take ten minutes for him to fall asleep._

— — —

"Wha—" Kichirou cried, alarmed when Miyako picked him up without a word. "What is it? What's wrong, Miyako-san?"

Miyako didn't respond, instead bursting into a full sprint as she veered off the tracks and into the woods. _This sound,_ she thought as the trees thinned up the hill.

The trees broke to reveal the ruins of a small town surging with Kabane below. In the midst of the magma-webbed blackness was a circle of guns and blades, behind which stood figures dressed in tattered, grime-smeared shirts.

Miyako scaled the closest tree, depositing Kichirou onto one of the higher-hanging branches.

"Stay here," she said before dropping down from the foliage and rushing downhill towards the sparse sphere of blades and guns that was slowly breaking under the pressure of dozens of metal-enforced bodies.

Drawing her blades, she cut down the nearest Kabane—wanderers that had just enough time to look up and take in their attacker before their heads dropped to their feet with heavy thunks—and sped towards the group of men, launching herself from the ground when she was near enough. Eyes shot up, both white and burning orange surprised as she landed, blades sweeping down as she severed arms and heads of Kabane that recovered enough to lunge towards her.

"This way!" she yelled, her blade flashing as another Kabane fell at her feet.

"Our train is over there!" one of the men yelled back, pointing towards the far edge of town.

Miyako nodded, severing another limb as she turned towards the direction he pointed. _I'll need to get Kichirou,_ she thought as she slammed a foot into one Kabane and her sword into another. _But I can't carry him through this horde of Kabane._

"Where are you headed?" Miyako called to the men as the group neared the sleeping locomotive, the Kabane on their tail.

"Osahashi! To the north, about four day's travel!"

"I'll meet you there," she called, turning around and facing the Kabane in full. "Go!"

"But—"

"Now!" Miyako shouted, cutting down another Kabane as she turned to glare at the soldiers aboard the train. "Get out of here!"

With one last hesitant look at Miyako, the captain gave the signal to his crew to start the engine and put them on their way as the Kabane made a final attempt to push forwards.


	5. Rather, sit, stay still and pray

_Author's Note: Hey all! Been another bit, but I'm finally finished with the next part of the story._

 _In other news, I recently came across an article saying that_ Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress _was just a rip-off of_ Attack on Titan _, and although I was initially very upset, I realized—after some grudging deliberation—that there's actually a lot of sense to the argument. But, no matter what the consensus is on that front,_ Kabaneri _is still a decent anime in and of itself, and I enjoyed watching it when it way back when._

 _Anyhoo, here's some more of Miyako and Kichirou, hope you like it!_

* * *

When the captain said four days, he must have meant by train, because four days for the average man on foot factored down to three or even two when Miyako pushed it. "Osahashi," though, was nowhere to be found on the roadside signposts she passed on the fourth, then fifth day.

"How're you holding up?" she asked, maintaining her brisk sprint. Kichirou offered no reply from his place on her back, where he'd been confined for longer than usual since Miyako had wanted to speed things up. That, however, didn't seem to be the cause of his silence—a cause that Miyako hadn't yet pinpointed.

Over the past few days, their conversations had been sparse and subdued. When they did talk, Kichirou tended to fall silent after a bit, seemingly unable to voice the thoughts in his head. His apparent internal conflict had silenced the bubbling questions in her throat, and she found herself following his lead and averting her eyes when conversation ceased. It wasn't so much that she was afraid of Kichirou's reply as she was of where her thoughts would lead her once he uttered the words. She wasn't prepared—it was as simple and complicated as that, and although she knew her fears were inane, she wanted to continue living in ignorance for a while longer, if only to avoid the possibility that even the faraway "Osahashi" would provide no answers.

Instead, she distracted herself with the more important issue of whether or not she would be allowed to enter Osahashi. However inconsequential her appearance was on a daily basis, she knew that she'd do well to remember that her red eyes and white hair would instantly incite wariness in any human, and if that didn't seal her fate then her glowing heart and molten veins that grew visible when she fought definitely would.

 _The guards I saved saw that,_ Miyako thought, clenching her teeth. _And even if they wrote it off as some illusion, the town's bound to have a screening process in place by now._

The guards of her own hometown had taken little time before ordering everyone in the station into lines so they could check for bites, and though Miyako's bitemarks had long faded, the glowing star in her chest was a dead giveaway as to her current status. She was a Kabane through and through, and she knew she couldn't fault the town if they spurned her when she arrived, because if she lived in Osahashi—if her family was still alive and well around her, sheltered from the Kabane hordes—she too would hope the border turned away anything like what she was now.

 _Well, it's useless worrying about it,_ Miyako thought, speeding up her pace. The answer to all her questions were still days away in Osahashi, and when she got there, she'd have the answers to her questions—regardless of whether she liked them or not.

— — —

Kichirou landed with a heavy thump, setting loose a cloud of dust in his wake, but he scrambled to his feet quickly, the makeshift shinai Miyako had fashioned for him trembling with every shaky breath as he levelled the weapon at Miyako.

"Feet," Miyako said, then rushed forwards, hands outstretched. Kichirou barely had time to process her words before he was on his back again, a fresh flurry of dust settling around him. But, just as before, he picked himself up and met Miyako's gaze to signal that he was ready, the tip of his bamboo sword wavering a he waited for her to strike.

Such was the new routine Miyako had devised for them—one where she played the Kabane and Kichirou the boy fighting for his life. Although she held back, she knew she was still a bit faster than the average Kabane, hitting a bit harder, fighting a bit smarter. However, she also knew that Kabane came in various forms as well. She'd now fought a total of two Kabane that had carried swords. The first, taking her by surprise, had managed to partially disarm her; the second, clearly less experienced, was dispatched only after it'd shattered one of her katanas. These instances had reminded her of her mortality—something that she'd slowly become jaded against after months of travel. She was more than a match for one sword-wielding Kabane, but against two or three? The feeling that possibility stirred wasn't so much fear as it was despair, and it was precisely this that drove her to taking up late-night practicing alone, smoothing out her swings and strike in preparation of the battle that could fell her.

In comparison to the sword-wielding Kabane, however, the Kabane she mimicked in Kichirou's practice sessions was ordinary, blindly charging forwards under the belief that its strength and speed would be enough, whatever the scenario. She'd considered devising a more basic exercise, but with their imminent arrival at Osahashi, she'd figured that she'd do what little she still could: imprint in Kichirou a sense of how Kabane moved and struck so that his response, in return, would become instinctual. Though he seemed to be making more progress in gathering bruises than she'd liked, the possibility of him surviving a Kabane attack drove her on.

"That's enough for today," she said, walking over and helping Kichirou up after a few more falls. "You alright?"

Kichirou nodded numbly as Miyako patted him down and dusted off his robes.

"Drink," Miyako said, depositing the satchel of water in his hands and guiding him over to the log she'd rolled up by the fire. "I'll go find us something to eat."

Kichirou nodded again, tipping the satchel into his mouth as Miyako walked off.

 _He's still quiet,_ she thought as she stalked into the darkness, straining her ears for sounds of life. _But all that matters is that I get him to Osahashi—to safety—and find the answers to my questions._

— — —

Miyako tossed her broken sword aside, frowning as she crouched down to examine the fallen Kabane. Being dead, the creature's eyes had darkened to a dull red, the burning light of life snuffed out by a clean stroke that severed head from body. Out of the open wound oozed a mixture of metallic reds and browns from which fresh steam hissed into the air, the molten metal itself quickly fading into blackness as it cooled and solidified.

 _Wonder if this metal is malleable,_ Miyako thought, poking at the cooled metal with a stray stick.

"Miyako-san!" Kichirou called, pulling Miyako from her investigations. Looking over, she spotted him running over, a sheathed katana in his hands.

"Thanks, Kichirou," Miyako said, untying her empty old scabbard and sliding on the new one. "This one's a long one—must be a bigshot samurai that commissioned this one."

Kichirou was silent beside her, eyes flicking between her and the Kabane at her feet.

"What's on your mind?" she asked, seeing his restlessness.

"Will… Will I really be able to kill a Kabane?" he asked at last, meeting Miyako's gaze nervously. "Even you snap your katana sometimes, and…"

He trailed off, fidgeting his feet. Miyako winced.

"Well," she started, not knowing how to continue. Should she tell him the truth? That for all his training, all his efforts, he would likely never actually be able to cut down a Kabane?

"It's better than nothing," she said at last, adjusting the angle at which her new katana fell at her hip. When Kichirou didn't respond, Miyako ruffled his hair and grinned. "Don't worry about it. I'm here to protect you, aren't I? All you need to do is be able to protect yourself until I get there."

Kichirou stayed silent, his gaze averted.

"C'mon now. Osahashi's waiting for us," Miyako said, patting his back before making to lead the way back to the tracks. She glanced back. "Kichirou?"

"Will they let you in?" he asked.

Miyako froze, but Kichirou plowed on.

"When we get to Osahashi, will they let you in?" he asked again, as if he hadn't been clear enough the first time around.

Miyako averted her eyes briefly before forcing herself to focus on Kichirou, aligning her gaze with his.

"They'll let you in, Kichirou," she said. "They have no reason not to, and the soldiers owe me that much for saving them."

"But will they let _you_ in?" Kichirou persisted, eyes wide.

Miyako paused. "I don't know," she admitted, "but… probably not."

"But you saved those soldiers!" Kichirou protested. "They owe you their lives, not me. How can they turn you away after you saved them?"

"I'm a Kabane, Kichirou," Miyako said, sighing. "How can they not? But it's alright because they'll take you in," she continued, giving him a gentle smile. "You'll be safe with them, and you'll be able to live a real life."

"No," Kichirou said, shaking his head. "I'm not staying there if you aren't."

"Kichirou, don't be silly—"

"I'm not," he said loudly.

"Kichirou," Miyako said, shaking her head. "I can't give you what Osahashi can, so you need to think about it before—"

"I don't want to," Kichirou retorted.

"Kichirou," Miyako repeated, frowning. "Please. Think about it."

Kichirou was silent, his eyes averted.

"Now let's get moving," Miyako said, continuing towards the tracks. "C'mon."

She exhaled with relief when Kichirou finally followed, the unsettled feeling inside her subdued for the moment.

 _He needs to stay at Osahashi,_ she thought as she led the way back. _He just needs to realize that._

— — —

"Remember to aim for the eyes," Miyako instructed, dodging Kichirou's shinai deftly. Kichirou, too breathless to reply, whirled towards her, the arc of his bamboo sword closer to her face than the last.

"Good," Miyako said, batting the shinai off with ease. "Again."

Kichirou, though, backed off, panting.

"Again," Miyako repeated, brows knitting.

"What's the point," he said, wiping his sweat away with the collar of his robe. "It's not like I'm going to be able to kill a Kabane anyway."

"But you'll be able to defend yourself against one," Miyako said, closing the distance between them as Kichirou bent down to grab his water satchel. "Isn't that why you wanted to train?"

Kichirou didn't reply, instead bringing the satchel to his lips.

"Kichirou, I know you're mad at me, but this isn't how you should be handling it," Miyako protested. "I don't have much left to teach you, but at this rate, I won't be teaching you anything before we arrive at Osahashi," she said, moving to face him when he turned. "So don't be like this, okay? Kichirou?"

"I'm not mad," Kichirou said when he finished drinking. Miyako sighed.

"Kichirou," she started, fully aware that exasperation had saturated her voice. "Don't be like this. You're the one that wanted to train, and I'm just—"

"Then I don't want to train anymore, alright?" Kichirou snapped.

"What?" Miyako asked, momentarily taken by surprise.

"I said I don't want to train anymore," Kichirou repeated. "What's the point? I'm going to be staying at Osahashi anyway, and there aren't any Kabane in Osahashi, are there?"

"Kichirou," Miyako said, her temper rising. "That's not the point."

"But it's my point," Kichirou retorted. "I don't want to learn to fight anymore."

"You don't mean that," Miyako said, crossing her arms.

"Yes I do," Kichirou replied, crossing his as well as he met her gaze with defiance. The seconds stretched out as Miyako tried unsuccessfully to stare him down. Finally, she gave up, sighing and uncrossing her arms.

"I don't know what you want me to do, Kichirou," she said sadly. "Osahashi's your best bet at a real life—you should know that."

"Then I don't want that life."

"Then what do you want instead? This?"

"Yes."

"You want this? Scavenging for food and clothes, not knowing whether or not you'll have a place to sleep or fresh food to eat? This isn't a life, you know."

"But it's your life."

Miyako paused. "Kichirou. You have to understand that we're different. That I'm a Kabane."

"I don't care."

"Not human," Miyako continued, ignoring him. "I drink blood, don't need to sleep, and am strong enough to use katanas to cut through Kabane. I don't think that my standards of living can be called 'normal' at this point."

"I don't care!" Kichirou shouted, his tears taking Miyako by surprise. "I'm not going to leave you! I don't want to stay in Osahashi if you can't. I—I want to stay with you," he continued, his hands wiping futilely at his eyes.

"Kichirou, don't say that," Miyako said, springing to his side and hugging him. "You have to go. You'll be safer there than you ever were with me, and they can offer you a life—a real life. Not this mess of travelling nonstop."

"I—I don't want—"

"Kichirou, I said that I would keep you safe, right?" Miyako asked. "I'm doing that, but Osahashi offers you more than just safety; it offers you a _life._ A chance to live like a normal boy again, to have friends and teachers and a place to call home. You deserve that much."

"But—But I want to stay with you," Kichirou protested, rubbing at his eyes. "I don't want to be stay with them. I don't _know_ them."

"Kichirou," Miyako said, her hands firm on his shoulders. "It would make me extremely happy if you could stay in Osahashi for me, where you're safe and well-fed and can make new friends. So can you do that? For me?"

"But—"

"Kichirou, please. Promise me you'll stay in Osahashi," Miyako said, meeting his teary eyes. "Can you do that? For me?"

"I—"

"Please. "

A fresh wave of tears spilled from Kichirou's eyes as he nodded, hugging Miyako. "I don't want to leave you, Miyako-san," he sobbed.

"Shh," Miyako said, rubbing his back as his tears streamed down her shoulder. "I don't want to leave you either, Kichirou, but you deserve better than what I can offer," she said. "And it would make me very, very happy if you could be happy. So be happy, alright? For me?"

Kichirou nodded, squeezing Miyako tightly as his sobs continued.

— — —

"We should be arriving soon," Miyako said as she used a stick to push some outlying pieces of wood further into the flames. Beside her, Kichirou set down his piece of rabbit, swallowing.

"What do you think it'll be like?" he asked.

"Osahashi? I expect it'll be fairly big if it's still standing, with tall walls and lots of guards."

"How tall?"

"Well, at least taller than those walls we came across in the deserted villages. Two or three stories minimum, but probably taller—as tall as they could build it, and of solid rock, stone, or mortar. No windows like normal castle walls, or Kabane would definitely have gotten in."

"With archers standing guard?"

"Sounds likely."

"And a big door for trains to enter?"

"Probably," Miyako said, grinning and ruffling Kichirou's hair. "Why're you asking me? You're going to end up living there anyway, so just wait and see!"

Kichirou's smile dropped at her words, and Miyako instantly regretted them.

"Hey, it'll be okay," Miyako said, using her closest arm to pull him in for a hug. "I'll come and visit often. Promise."

Kichirou nodded fervently, prompting a grin from Miyako again.

"Now eat your food properly, or you're never going to grow," she chided. "If you don't, you might even end up being shorter than me!"

"No I won't!" Kichirou protested. "I'll grow taller than you for sure!"

"Sure, sure," Miyako teased, laughing. "I'd love to see the day that happens."

— — —

The signpost, large and well-maintained as it was, was impossible to miss. "Osahashi" was scrawled out in thick black paint on the wooden sign, which had been firmly staked at the designated fork, complete with a makeshift roof that seemed to have already weathered a few rainstorms.

"Finally," Miyako breathed when she spotted the structure in the distance, scooping Kichirou up and breaking into a sprint.

"Wha—"

"Just hang on—we're almost there," Miyako said, nodding at the signpost as they passed it. "See? 'Osahashi.'"

"I can read," Kichirou protested, but Miyako was too excited to care to reply. After all her days of travel, after all the weeks of wondering into the night sky, the answers she sought were finally within her grasp, so tantalizingly close that she was afraid that anything but sprinting at them at full speed would cause her to miss them, as if they were really as elusive as they'd been when she couldn't see proof of her destination.

"Miyako-san," Kichirou protested again.

"We're almost there," Miyako repeated, swinging wide of the turn in her rush but quickly correcting her overstep. And, just as she'd promised, there it was: The trees broke to reveal a grand wall that stretched for miles either direction, rising far above Miyako's head—easily three or four stories, if not more. A trench had been dug out in front of the wall, several meters by several tens of meters of dirt displaced to add extra security, dividing forest from civilization. The faint echo of hammers clanging could be heard from the top of the wall, and Miyako was just able to make out an arm peeping out from over the edge.

"Hello!" she yelled, hoping her voice carried.

The clanging stopped, a deathly silence falling over the wall.

"Hello! Can you hear me?" Miyako tried again, stepping out from the forest edge.

A head poked out from over the wall, its features too distant to make before it disappeared, a frenzy of conversation sounding in its wake.

"Who are you?" the man called, reappearing. "Where did you come from?"

"Hishima Miyako and Sasaki Kichirou!" Miyako called back. "We're from up north! We followed the tracks here, and we need shelter from the Kabane! Two weeks ago, I saved a group of your soldiers rom the Kabane! They should have returned on train!"

The hum of conversation too high up to hear broke out again as the man disappeared. A few seconds later, he reappeared, joined by two more men.

"Head that way along the wall!" one of them shouted, pointing to the right. "The gates are over there!"

"Thank you!" Miyako yelled, bursting into a run in the direction pointed, but when she glanced back, they'd already disappeared.

— — —

The trench, as it turned out, wasn't so much dug to protect the wall as it was to allow for a drawbridge to function and thus trains to enter. For Miyako and Kichirou, though, a rope was swung across instead.

"Grab on!" came the shout. "We'll pull you up when you fall!"

"I'll jump over!" Miyako called back, eyeing the trench warily. Clearly it'd been a while since they'd had to handle people rather than trains.

Sweeping her eyes over the drawbridge—a conglomeration of metal parts fitted messily but securely into each other, clearly an ongoing project from the looks of the remaining wood—Miyako's eyes stopped on the metal support a few meters further in. The square length of metal, as roughly crafted as the rest of the bridge, seemed to serve the purpose of a ledge Miyako could land and push off of to reach the main platform, which was currently blocked from her view by the drawbridge.

"What? Don't be insane, girl!" came the reply, but Miyako was already adjusting her stance in preparation.

"Ready?" Miyako asked, grinning.

"Ready," Kichirou replied, his grip around her neck tightening.

With three bounds, Miyako cleared her half of the bridge, turning in midair to plant her foot on the support's flat face and push off it to propel her towards the main platform on which a crew of men stood, staring at her with wide eyes and open mouths as she landed and leaned down to allow Kichirou onto his feet.

 _Far from the riskiest thing I've done so far carrying Kichirou,_ Miyako thought with amusement as she took in their shocked faces, _and definitely not the longest distance I've cleared either, although perhaps the one with the deepest drop if I failed._

"Good god, are you even human?" one of the men asked. Miyako flinched, but the sound of hooves interrupted her thoughts.

"Slow," came the call as a group of what looked to be horsebacked samurai came to a halt at the entrance of the bridge.

"That's her, sir," one of the men said. "That's the girl who saved us."

The man beside him nodded, and it took a moment for Miyako to place him as the captain of the group she'd rescued.

"I recognize her, Yokima. You all, stay here," the captain said, dismounting his horse and walking over to Miyako and Kichirou despite a round protest from some of his guard.

"I am Fujioka Yasuhiro, one of the captains of the guard here at Osahashi, and I thank you for your aid two weeks ago," the captain said once he'd reached the pair on the bridge, bowing.. "Tell me—what are your names?"

"Hishima Miyako," Miyako said, "and this is Sasaki Kichirou."

"Well, Miyako-san, Kichirou-san, welcome to Osahashi," Yasuhiro said. "There will be a physical examination before we can head to the main hall, if that's alright with both of you. It's nothing to worry about."

Miyako hesitated, eyes wide. "I don't think—"

"It's nothing to worry about," Yasuhiro repeated, meeting Miyako's eyes. "Everyone who enters through the gates has to be examined, but I've seen to it that special accommodations have been made for you two, seeing as I am in your debt."

Miyako hesitated again, but—with a squeeze of her hand from Kichirou, who looked pleadingly at her—she relented, nodding.

"Very good, Miyako-san, Kichirou-san. Follow me," Yasuhiro said, leading the way towards the gates. The guards there, now dismounted, parted for him, most of them giving Miyako and Kichirou a wide berth as they approached, a mixture of wariness and distrust apparent on their faces. A few, however, seemed to differ in opinion; the other man who'd spoken out when he saw Miyako approached now, his grin revealing a few missing teeth despite his young age.

"Yokima Koichi," he said, introducing himself. "Glad to see that you got here without problem, girlie. What are your names?"

"I'm Miyako, and this is Kichirou," Miyako said, motioning at Kichirou, who was clinging onto her arm, his eyes wary and watchful.

"Oh don't you worry, boy. There's nothing to be afraid of here," Koichi said, flashing his gap-toothed grin again. "We've got everything taken care of, so just go along with it."

"Koichi-san, when you say that everything's been taken care of," Miyako started, but Koichi cut her off with a wave of his hand.

"Just call me Koichi, please. I can't have someone I owe my life to calling me something no one else does. As for what I mean, I mean that things are taken care of," he said, winking. "Just go with the flow, girlie. Go with the flow."


End file.
